From 500 bc To ad 1500

In the thousand years between 500 bc and ad 500, a vast number of discoveries of significance to the growth of metallurgy were made. The Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes, for example, demonstrated that the purity of gold could be measured by determining its weight and the quantity of water displaced upon immersion—that is, by determining its density. In the pre-Christian portion of the period, the first important steel production was started in India, using a process already known to ancient Egyptians. Wootz steel, as it was called, was prepared as sponge (porous) iron ... (100 of 19,797 words)